Trajectory: A short story collection

Description

The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo's novels; and all are bound together by parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts. In 'Horseman,' a young professor confronts an undergraduate plagiarist - as well as her own regrets. In 'Intervention,' a realtor facing a serious medical prognosis finds himself in his late father's shadow. 'Voice' gives us a semiretired academic who is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And 'Milton and Marcus' takes us into a lapsed novelist's attempt to rekindle his screenwriting career - a career that depends wholly, at a crucial moment, on two Hollywood icons (one living, one dead). Shot through with Russo's inimitable humour, wisdom and surprise, Trajectory is the work of a masterful writer continuing to discover new heights.

Richard Russo is the author of eight novels, two collections of stories, and On Helwig Street, a memoir. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which like Nobody's Fool was adapted to film, in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries. He lives in Maine.

So rich and flavoursome that the temptation is to devour it all at once. * Boston Globe * Thoughtful, soulful . . . It will abruptly break your heart. That's what Richard Russo does, without pretension or fuss, time and time again. * New York Times * Another of the author's peerless depictions of small-town life. * Wall Street Journal * Trajectory functions as a neat introduction to Russo's oeuvre and interests, exploring the constant friction between his thoughtful characters and the brashly confident people they rub up against. And the new story, Milton and Marcus, is worth the cover price alone, Russo finding a rare soulfulness in the life of a down-on-his luck Hollywood screenwriter. * Observer * Thoughtful and warmhearted, [Russo's] fiction has the engaging quality of tales told by a friend, over drinks, about a person we know in common. And so we lean forward, eager to hear what happened next. * New York Times Book Review * The four terrific stories in Trajectory tackle themes that are instantly familiar...but Russo's seemingly effortless prose transforms them into something freshly seen. * Daily Mail * Russo has fashioned tales compact enough to make an immediate impression (and to read in a single sitting), but rich [in] believable characters, graceful plotting and pointed dialogue. * Columbus Dispatch * Beautifully accomplished * Glasgow Herald * [Russo] casts a warm eye on life in all its knottiness in a masterly work that hits the bullseye. * RTE *